Unlinked Duplicated from Linked Duplicates (Change Alt-D into Shift-D behavior)
You're unlinking the object from the scene with the Unlink command. What Alt+D does is make a new &quot;Object&quot; whose &quot;Mesh&quot; is linked to another object's mesh. If you select one of these objects and go into the &quot;Object Data Properties&quot; tab, you'll see the mesh name with a number next to it (2 in the example) meaning there are that many users of the mesh. If you click the number, Blender will make the active object a single user copy of the mesh. The mesh will get a new name, and the number will disappear. Missing numbers mean single user.